Shopping With the Civic Ethicist

By BARCODE 2x

Why anyone would participate in a thing called Black Friday is completely beyond me. It sounds apocalyptic. It sounds like a bomb going off in a big box store. As your Civic Ethicist, I am recommending you stay home with your family this Friday after Thanksgiving.

Don't rush out into the world to shop. You will get bamboozled into buying something you never intended, and that can be dangerous. You are walking into an ethical minefield. You might as well buy your own nuclear warhead. You will reach the store, and be confronted with deals and you will shop with a mob mentality. This is not a clearheaded way of beginning your holiday. The economists say that spending is up. A good sign in a troubled market. But tread carefully.

Consider a flat-screen TV. Everyone wants one, and they are becoming very affordable. But they are beyond redemption, ethically speaking. The machine is built in a sweatshop in Asia somewhere. The workers, and their children, and their childrens' children, are all conscribed to a life of poverty. Enslavement, almost, working in factories, and living in squalor. Your dollar doesn't go to them. It goes to the institution that owns them.

Now, come with me to Africa. Where very precious and rare metals are mined to create microchips and processors. Your cellphone and computer are full of them. These mines are governed by men with guns. The mines are one of the most dangerous places on earth.

Package it all up and ship it. Consider then, the costs of fuel to get it to the store or warehouse, then to deliver it to your home. And then, when you turn it on, you face more trouble. The corporate world will then bombard you with more advertising and product placement that will push you towards more of the same kind of consumption. While your TV drives up your electric bill, and you sit considering buying a different phone, a DVD, a plastic toy, you are under attack. Television is the corporate world's mainline into your brain, a fiber-optic conduit of Black Friday Magic.

Phew. Thank the Ethics Gods you won't be buying one of those! You may opt to get your loved one a smaller gift, a practical gift. Socks and a sweater. Really, you face many of the same issues. Sweatshops, shipping, etc. And shouldn't people buy their own socks?

Buy local. Buy socks and sweaters made from a local sheep's wool. Go to a farmer's market and you will find locally made, small, practical gifts. A wheel of cheese, glassware, and other special items. And the recipient will appreciate your thoughtfulness. This is a meaningful gift. A gift you have a connection with. You know exactly where it comes from, and you buy it direct from the manufacturer.

If you must buy consumer electronics, of course, there are no locally-made options. Not unless you live near an Asian sweatshop or an African mine. So try to shop at a locally-owned merchant. Or buy used. You may find a used television on craigslist.com that is exactly what you need. Craig and his list have opened up a consumer Utopia for you.

Don't buy books for people. Not unless you know it's exactly what they want. Don't buy them anything you think they SHOULD read. If you buy Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, for instance, you could be doing them a lot of good. You could get them thinking about what they eat, and encouraging them to buy local. But in doing so, you are forcibly imposing your own ethics on them. Pollan's book is the benevolent version of this kind of holiday propaganda.

There are dangerous nonfiction books out there that people will give as gifts this year. Their loved ones will tear the wrapping off of a total literary mindfuck written by media pundits or corrupt politicians. Politicians make their living as authors. It can be the primary source of their income, in some cases. These are books that try to expose imaginary conspiracies. Political books about ideal worlds, matching the values of the gift-giver. Paranoia on paper. The recipient smiles and goes along with it. Then they return it from whence it came.

Books are the gifts most often returned. Exchanged for something else. All your thoughtful ethical imposing goes down the drain and they walk out of the box store, during the post-holiday fire sale, with multiple items that they actually want. You should have just given them cash.

Or a check. In flu season, money is one of the easiest ways to pass the deadly diseases. Most $20 bills, studies have shown, have spent time in a stripper's g-string at some point during the 20-spot's lifetime. That is a side issue, but something to think about.

The holidays are an ethical opportunity. You can do a lot of good with your dollar. A lot of money will be spent this Friday, and whenever money is spent, there are ethical considerations. Here are some great ethical gifts:

• Give to a charity in your loved one's name. A good charity, a solid organization that employs people and makes a huge impact. Do your research. Find out how the money is spent. This is the gift that will make the recipient cry and hug you passionately.
• Give your loved one an experience of some kind. A trip to an opera or a museum.
• Whatever you give, give your time. The holidays are a time to think charitably. But the holidays are intimate times too. Time spent quietly at home is where the great holiday memories come from.

Give the gift of ethics this season. The gift that cannot be exchanged so easily.